I attended a two-day conference at Wake Forest University on the Federal Reserve. The Fed is the U.S. central banking system and was founded in 1913 to replace the earlier National Banking System experiments that had been in place since the eighteenth century. I enjoyed a paper presented by George Selgin (University of Georgia) and […]
Has the Federal Reserve been a failure? Read More »
One measure of a nation’s success is its economic health: how free are a nation’s citizens to pursue their own economic goals, and how wealthy on average are its citizens? Almost always the wealthy countries are those that enjoy a significant degree of the economic freedom. (See the chart in the image; click to enlarge.)
Successful nations and the British empire Read More »
Those who questioned his theology he called “pigs,” “asses,” “riffraff,” “dogs,” “idiots,” and “stinking beasts.”
John Calvin’s Geneva Read More »
At The Economist web log, Will Wilkinson has a good piece on Rawlsian egalitarian arguments against free speech. The firing of Juan Williams makes perfect sense in that framework, as does the left’s outrage over the Citizens United decision. Wilkinson rightly notes the principled outcome of that framework: “it seems to me that this conception
Wilkinson on free speech versus equality Read More »
The Kindle version of my Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault is now available. The book had a gratifying two hardcover printings and eight softcover printings from 2004-2009, and I am finalizing an expanded edition to be published in hardcover in the spring of 2011. Here’s the book description: “Tracing postmodernism from
Kindle version of Explaining Postmodernism published Read More »
A pair of striking excerpts from a discussion at CNN Money between motivational speaker Ken Blanchard and Scott Shane, professor of entrepreneurship at Case Western. Here is Scott Shane on whether the government should encourage entrepreneurship or craft policies to divert resources to high-growth companies: “From a societal point of view, if you have a
Entrepreneurship, individualism, and collectivism Read More »
Should one be free to drive a taxi in Miami? Apparently not. The city government of Miami controls the number of taxi cabs and, as of 2002, had decided that only 1,856 taxi licenses shall exist. When a license becomes available, it is sold via lottery. But to participate in the lottery one must pay
Timothy Sandefur’s new book Read More »
For much of the twentieth century, poverty and stagnation characterized India’s economic life, yet India has transformed itself and prospects for its 1.1 billion people have improved dramatically. Economics professor Nimish Adhia recently spoke at Rockford College on how Bollywood films both signaled and contributed to the cultural shift necessary for India’s economic liberalization to
Interview with Nimish Adhia on Bollywood and the new India Read More »